Carp, I guess it's the high pay we demand here in the U.S.A. I was just listening to the news and they were talking about the Harley Davidson plant in Wisconsin. They said the workers agreed to a wage freeze for some time to come. I forget the time frame. Their wage freezes at $30 per hour. There are a lot of people out there today in the U.S.A. that would take that job for half of that I'm sure.

_________________________Well, until they make it right, I hope they never sleep at night. They better make some changes and do it soon. -Things Goin' On/Lynyrd Skynyrd

Honestly many companies do have wage freezes long before the econo went south.

Well they call it wage limits for a given position. My position limit was 95K after that I would have to either get a promotion into the next higher position or get a Masters degree that the company could use.

AnywayCertainly it is cheap over seas - However like the case of Boeing, turned out to be a huge mistake.

I think it was for 7 years. And $30 sounds like a lot, but it translates to about $60K per year... nice, but not huge. What does the average mechanic charge per hour for service? $50-70 / hour. They took a hit IMO. Also remember that job is skilled labor, not some ditch digger.

Around here David, independent mechanics charge $40 an hour. That Harley Davidson job is most likely assembly line production. I would say a mechanic's hourly rate is more skilled than a production line worker. I believe UPS drivers make about $25 an hour. Either way, I still think a whole boatload of people would love to have that $30 an hour job. When me & my uncle ran our small printshop in Virginia I was paid $18.75 per hour in the best years. Then we split up profit at the end of the year if there was any to split up.

_________________________Well, until they make it right, I hope they never sleep at night. They better make some changes and do it soon. -Things Goin' On/Lynyrd Skynyrd

Well I'm definitely not saying $30/hr is a sloppy wage, it's good and better than many. But that job is also monotonous... and if people screw up, you end up with costly recalls.. like many car companies have had. One recall just recently was for a steering wheel screw not being tight enough.

If you try to short change people's wages, morale and product quality usually suffers. Not saying give them $50 / hr either, but there's got to be a happy medium. With normal inflation of 3-4%, by the time they can renegotiate salaries they'll have lost about 23%-30% of their income. That's tough.

What I don't understand is why we would want to reduce the income of someone who's making a relatively low annual wage. It's the same thing in regards to unions--they're at fault for everything that's wrong with America. Why? Because they work to get people decent wages and decent benefits? I know full well that union rules and regulations are a PITA, but the reason there are such things is that without the rules the employer would roll right over the worker. When it comes to this stuff, I'm almost always on the workers' side. And no, I'm not thinking of small mom and pop enterprises when I say that. I those cases the employer and the employee can be so close to each other that economically speaking they're one category.

I've felt for decades that the GOP plan is to take America back (now they admit it)..

back to where the wealth is in the hands of 1-2% and no middle class and everyone else is a serf!! i.e. back to the days of the robber barons with no regulations, they can use workers/people like cannon fodder... oh wait Bush did that already

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